If your DVD shelf is anything like mine, you've got a small section carved out for films that fall into the category of "so-bad-it's-good" (SBIG, I guess?). While wannabe-dramatic masterpiece The Room is the hallmark of that genre, most of these films tend to be B-grade science fiction/horror films or star Mark Wahlberg. While today I have read the first comic I think warrants a place on my DVD shelf, next to The Stink of Flesh, Deep Blue Sea, and The Happening. Comics as a medium are often loved for their ability to go anywhere, to be absurd and colorful and loud. Sprinkle in some Nazi, Clowns, or Hobos, and your comic has got peoples' attention. Sadly, its usually a gimmick, a quick appearance or a simplistic deathmatch heavy on the action art and low on any memorable comedy, or the writer knows what they are doing and it’s just a legitimately good comic (booooring). Rarely have I read a comic that has attempted to thread so many different genre influences as once, fail just miserably, and then rise out of its own smoldering ashes to join that rank of SBIG classics. Vescell by Enrique Carrion and John “Roc” Upchurch via Image Comics does that, and here’s how… 1) It throws EVERYTHING out there. At its most basic, Vescell is a science-fiction story about a company that deals with transferring minds into new bodies. It is a familiar trope in scifi made more popular with Joss Wedon’s Dollhouse TV series. Then there is an undercurrent of noir flavor that manifests in some deeply sex-obsessed concepts in some very weird, often lazy ways. And then just for the fuck of it, on the back front cover we are told there is also a fantasy element, and pretty shortly we start seeing beautifully-drawn demon taxicab drivers and a fairy that gets fired out of a gun repeatedly. This final portion feels almost tacked on after the first ten pages, and what all this means is you have no idea about where shit is going. It’s absurd stuff just in terms of pacing, and with all the talk about “decompression” in the JLA book it’s a nice example of how much story can get awkwardly forced into just one page. But really it’s all very fun because it’s still functionally readable; just expect to be confused by what is giving the most attention. 2) The dialogue is a work of art. This is where films just have a general advantage over comics. Watching The Room, half the fun is Tommy Wiseau’s insane accent and how the production and editing do no favors for an already incoherent script (Exampled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9Ew3TIeVQ). Comics could never replicate the fun of that scene from The Room, though they may occasionally come close in their own ways. But Vescell makes up for this “deficiency” by having its relatively blankslate characters say some wonderfully awfully-written things. Not just stupid things, but things that aim at poetry. And they are all about weirdly conflating crucifixion with relationships and sex. The main character, Agent Barrino, is tactlessly come onto at one point by a woman about to get a sex-change for her husband’s whims. “Think you can deliver one more package?” (That means his penis), to which he responds by asking why this woman is willing to do all this for her husband. She echoes an early character that it is all about “sacrificing yourself for the sins of those you love”. The main character retorts coolly “So you crucify yourself on a Y Chromosome?” And then I think they sex. Aside from all the wonderful dialogue that pops off the page (and believe me, there is pleeeenty more) we are also treated to an incomprehensible, full-page poem at the end. “Hot chocolate hazelnut sipper, I pull up my zipper” is but a small portion that wonderfully, puzzling end note. 3) There are legitimately cool things to look at and familiar but no less interesting plotlines setup. All of this would be moot if it was a functionally written and drawn comic book, which Vescell is. My favorite scene was early on when Agent Barrino summons his girlfriend, who is trapped in the fantasy dimension parallel to Earth for mysterious, terrible reasons not explained in this issue. To do so, Barrino checks into a hotel with a prostitute and then uses her as a Vessel, so he can tell her he hasn’t found a way to bring her back over and then bang her. It’s the ultimate booty call, and the visuals of the prostitute’s small frame transforming into his thicker girlfriend are a bit of fun. But yeah, I should note there are a lot of sexually exploitative elements to this comic, another tenet of the SBIG genre, and it plays into the plot towards the end. Anyways, there are plenty of other examples for each of these points but to truncate this a bit I’ll just say if you can enjoy a comic ironically and don’t mind spending $2.99 on it, I’ve only scratched the surface of this absurd piece of comic.